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Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Sebastião Salgado: The Modern Face of the Worker

The images of child laborers photographed by Lewis Hine in the previous post are like a faint memory from a distant past, but the reality of today's working man isn't so far removed from those of the previous feature. The harsh reality of manual labor as captured by Hine a century ago is still reflected in the faces of today's laborers as photographed by Sebastião Salgado.

Mr. Salgado is currently based in Paris but hails from Aimorés in Southeastern Brazil. His series entitled Workers began in 1986 and centers on different industries that employ manual labor all around the world.

From the tea plantations in Rwanda to the gold mines of Brazil to the textile industry in Bangladesh, Mr. Salgado captured the workers in their element and presented them in striking black and white photographs.

This kind of presentation makes the pictures both objective and subjective at the same time, but the focus is never lost on the worker who is the subject. As he puts it, "It is not the photographer who makes the picture, but the person being photographed." His images are testament to that quote.

In many places, machinery has become the dominant means of harvesting and processing materials, but operating costs as well as the overflowing presence of manual labor means that men and women still do most of the work.

Even with the proper equipment and right training, many jobs are still physical taxing and quite dangerous. If not for Mr. Salgado's images, this fact would remain relatively unknown or largely forgotten.

If you look closely at these photographs, you will notice that some of these workers are gathering the raw ingredients that become the commodities and even luxury items marketed in the first world. It's not unlikely that you have used a product that might have crossed the hands on one of these workers.

The sad reality of this series is that these workers toil around the clock to provide the raw materials and processed goods that allow others to lead a more comfortable life.

You would think that after seven years of grueling field work around the work, Mr. Salgado would move on to more glamorous projects, but he has persevered in documenting refugees and their migration plight, the effects of drought near the Sahara desert in Africa, and the global campaign to eradicate polio.

He co-founded along with his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado the Amazones Images photo agency. His current project is entitled Genesis and is focused on documenting landscapes and cultures that are pristine and left untouched by urbanization.

Man. Striking images, as per usual. It really shows the common threads that exist between people enduring hardships across the world. Culture and ideology aside, no one in this world is that different from each other

You really have to have a lot of respect for these people. They might never even get on the internet in their lives, but they mine the ores that become parts of your desktops or laptops. It's an amazing cycle.

It's shocking sometimes how we think we need reforms in worker's rights when the things depicted in the photos above are happening around the world. If only there was a way to speed up social development in third world countries.